About Me

Saturday, March 19, 2016

THE MARK IN AMERICA, ISSUE #2, PAGE 15

I like the way I did the natural lighting in the room, with the strong
daylight overcoming the artificial light. I made good use of the wood paneling
to depict the plane of the wall falling away from the window. Ditto with the
pile of the rug.

Thinking in film terms, the
scene transition between panels 3 and 4 would be cutting on the sound of
breaking glass (panel 3) and the smack of Isaac’s hand into his palm (on the
far left of panel 4). Again, I’m manipulating the reader’s eye read—the first
thing one sees in panel 4 is the word balloon, then the smack of the
fist-in-palm, then one’s eyes “pan” across to Burovnik and two of his goons.
Damn; looking at in now, it would have worked better if Isaac’s word balloon
had been placed on the right side of his face, so that the eyes would hit FIRST
on the fist-in-palm instead of the word balloon. Oh well; one of the downsides
of working “Marvel Style” is that I couldn’t indicate balloon placement as the
dialogue hadn’t been written yet, except in general terms. However, I regret
the simplicity of the inking on Isaac’s face, especially when I put all that
volumetric rendering into his shoulder. It was probably cowardice on my part.

Panel 6 is an example of
what the writer, Mike Barr decried as my “archness”, i.e. my droll sense of
humor that I injected into the proceedings on a regular basis. I carefully
placed Isaac in the middle of a target shaped carpet (writing a margin note to
the colorist to treat the alternating circular bands red and white). This was
NOT in the script, I’m pretty sure, and Mike may have resented the way I was
hi-jacking the narrative.

This is page 15 for
"The Mark" issue 2, volume 2, otherwise known as "The Mark In
America", published by Dark Horse Comics in January 1994. Written by Mike
Barr, drawn by Brad Rader.